


Sherlock and the Swan

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Inspired by Poetry, Let's write/draw Sherlock, Yeatsed and ravished, beaks and crops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:06:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Indifferent  beak of the riding crop, a lick to the hard-starved jaw,<br/>a stinging slap to the cerebrum …<br/>oh god yes we are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlock and the Swan

**Author's Note:**

> For[ Let's Draw (Write) Sherlock](http://letsdrawsherlock.tumblr.com/post/49243616406/lets-draw-write-sherlock)
> 
> [Beautiful art by Justgot1!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/788149/chapters/1523369)
> 
> Yeats' "Leda and the Swan": girl-god non-con. Not my direction I hope.

“ _All human beings, like Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the 'white rush' of experience. For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of art."—Camille Paglia_

You, Sherlock, are _not_ a great white bird.

You aren’t a god, though you think you are.

You aren’t great but you might be good.

Start again, John thinks.

There were, once, swans on the water.

By a field where a hiker up from Down Under hapless looking-at-birds about-to-die, and the water flowed past and you thrilled to (blink) your own nakedness and a woman who was, indeed, some kind of bird, the kind that comes with thunder, and we do mean comes. Rapturous, raptored, sharp-shinned cropped--

and you stripped bare in a way we hadn’t seen,

deductions beating a retreat from all that flesh.

Jesus, John thinks.

Gorgeous.

*******             

_See anything you like Doctor Watson._

_(For I’m a goddess feathered and split_

_from myself, cloud-collector, peleias,_

_the tip of an ice-web cast_

_from the mount of the gods._

_And I know what they like.)_

It’s all right,  John thinks, I’m a doctor, and in the aftermath

of the beak-bruised cheek I’ll fix it,

carry you—oh, damn it, why do I do this, cabs,

hospital-chapel-transport of the urban warfield,

wrangling you into them, breathing.

Damn it.

John, why do you do it, Lestrade said, wait, let me just, for posterity.

Record this.

I didn’t think it was possible for him to look that ravished.

*******

I thought of consuming you; I did, thinks John.

Almost literally.

And it pins him to himself.

Oh god yes we are. A pair that is,

bonded, and glimmering along the thoroughfares until--

can’t think about that anymore; it’s poetry, and this, well. Is not.

Before the glancing blow,

indifferent beak of the riding crop,a lick to the hard-

starved jaw,

a stinging slap to the cerebrum, she was.

And you sat up, pinked up, took notice--

ah, sod it, strange-heart,

your pulse says we are.

*******

John, Sherlock says, she was here.

Put a hand to your warm face, say sleep.

She wasn’t wearing the coat, you say.

Naked.

Sherlock (my indifferent

staggering darling),

before this dropped you, before it did,

(death that is, your god)

we carried you home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leda and the Swan  
> W.B. Yeats
> 
> A sudden blow: the great wings beating still  
> Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed  
> By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,  
> He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
> 
> How can those terrified vague fingers push  
> The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?  
> And how can body, laid in that white rush,  
> But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
> 
> A shudder in the loins engenders there  
> The broken wall, the burning roof and tower  
> And Agamemnon dead.  
> Being so caught up,  
> So mastered by the brute blood of the air,  
> Did she put on his knowledge with his power  
> Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?  
> -  
> [Cezanne's Leda and the Swan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Cezanne_Leda_au_cygne.jpg)


End file.
